A lot’s being made of the booking I received on Saturday without even getting on the pitch, but in my opinion it was a big over-reaction.
For those of you who didn’t see it I was shown a yellow card for apparently interfering as Stoke’s Rory Delap was preparing to launch one of his long throws.
Ok, I’ll admit I started doing my stretches near him to try and distract him but we were just having a bit of banter. Rory took it as a joke and the Stoke crowd were getting involved too which is fair enough, but there was nothing malicious in it.
Surely the referee could have shown some common sense? He could have told me to sit down, or Rory could have moved along the line a bit but instead he chose to book me which was a little disappointing.
It was even more disappointing considering Geovanni was pole-axed by a challenge earlier in the game and the player didn’t even get booked. It my opinion it was close to a sending off.
And personally speaking the booking killed my chances of getting on the pitch as the boss told me he couldn’t risk me being sent off.
Away from that incident I think we were disappointed to only come away with a draw from the game. In my opinion it’s definitely two points loss as we did enough to get a win.
But we’ve now gone three games without defeat and we’re back at the KC on Saturday and as I keep saying it’s the home games we need to be winning.
We’re up against an old club of mine Middlesbrough at the weekend and I’ve only got fond memories of my time there.
Gareth Southgate, who of course is now the manager, and his assistant Colin Cooper were two of my team-mates and I still know all the backroom staff – although that’s obviously not going to stop me looking for a goal should I get the chance.
In many ways Boro are a team Hull could aspire to be like. They’ve got a great chairman who doesn’t interfere but also provides money when it’s needed and they are now an established Premier League side.
I think Hull can be like them, but the first thing we need to do is make sure we stay in this league and another win on Saturday will help make that a reality.
